Plot Synopsis: The destruction of the Enterprise near a distortion in the space-time continuum causes a time loop to form, trapping the ship and crew in time and forcing them to relive the events that led to their deaths.
Plot A and B Analysis: The teaser is very brief, but it may be the best in the history of Star Trek: within 60 seconds the USS Enterprise explodes, with the loss of all hands. Plot A is about the time loop, there is no plot B. The plot starts off with a poker game which features more prominently in this episode than any other. Beverly actually beats Riker; Geordi comes in to sickbay, Crusher gets some déjà vu; later she is in her quarters pruning some flowers, gets into bed, hears voices and knocks her glass off the nightstand; the crew meets in the observation lounge; Worf calls the staff onto the bridge due to “unusual readings”; on the bridge we see a sort of space cloud, all systems go down, a starship comes through the cloud, striking the Enterprise and it explodes. This basic structure will be repeated throughout the episode as the ship loops again and again, and again. The variations in how the time loop is filmed and watching the crew slowly begin to understand what is happening to them is what makes this plot so compelling–not to mention watching the Enterprise explode over and over again as they fail! We get something different every time. This episode is well-plotted and well directed and edited throughout, it’s a great ride.
Favorite Scenes: This entire episode is practically one favorite scene. It’s so jarring to hear Picard saying, “All hands, abandon ship!” and the subsequent explosion in the teaser that I have to include it. All of the poker scenes are great. My favorite poker scene in the episode occurs in the 20th minute, when Beverly, Worf and Riker call each card before Data deals it, it’s very cool.
Use of Cast/Characters: There is no one character that stands out in this episode, it’s an excellent example of an ensemble episode where everyone contributes, with the possible exception of Troi who has very little. Ro also has nothing to do but say a couple of lines and have a very short, almost Vulcan haircut. A simple but excellent example of how amazing Data actually is occurs during the 26th minute when he listens to Beverly’s recording of the voices in his room, and is able to pick out the individual voices of all 1000+ members of the crew. That’s a handy guy to have around! Not to mention he’s the reason they were able to send a message to themselves. Kelsey Grammer has a cameo at the end as captain Bateson, which is cool.
Blu Ray Version: Pause at 7:30 and look at the mirror in the background. It’s deliberately opaque so we can’t see the reflection of camera equipment or the cameraman. If you pause at 14:44 we can clearly in HD see Geordi’s place of birth: Mogadishu, Somalia. Dang they speak good American in Somalia! This is a nice touch, since his is one of the few personnel files we didn’t see listed in Conundrum. The graphic for showing the temporal causality loop in the 27th minute was changed a bit from the original, but I think it looks good. A microphone popping into view briefly in the original version was deleted from the Blu Ray version. Pause at 33:43 and you’ll see the mirror behind Riker’s head is again made opaque to hide incriminating reflections.
Nitpicks: I have to get pretty nit-picky to find any flaws in this episode. The way Geordi and Beverly are shot in the 34th minute is very low, so the audience is practically looking up their noses. I’m also not quite sure why the power fails, the shields are inoperative, the thrusters don’t work, and they can’t even eject the warp core–everything which might actually help them happens to go off-line, it’s a little bit of a cheat. Plus the Enterprise runs into yet another ship from a long time ago…how many ships from the past hundred or so years got lost? Finally, how would that glass of Beverly’s break on carpet?
Overall Impression: This isn’t just one of greatest episodes of season five or TNG, it’s simply one of the greatest episodes in the history of Star Trek. Everything works to terrific effect here, and practically every cast member is used to good effect as well. It’s a revelation to watch the same sequence of events again and again, and have it be riveting every time. I love how the poker game is really what saves the crew! The actors are great, the story is first rate and original, great technical ability is demonstrated by the director, editor and cameramen. I happily rate this episode 5 out of 5 stars.
Behind the Scenes/Trivia: This episode marks the 2/3 point of the TNG series. This kind of repetition as a form of storytelling in film goes all the way back to the great film Rashomon by one of my favorite directors, Akira Kurosawa. If you take a close look at the cards Data is dealing in the 33rd minute, Worf gets three kings. If they had played, he may actually have won a hand! He’s just not good at poker. Including the teaser, the Enterprise crew traverse five loops throughout the episode. Of course since the ship’s time was off by 17.4 days, that indicates at least 17-18 loops all told. While structurally similar to Groundhog Day, this episode was released a year before that film. Rick Berman told Frakes (who directed this episode, his fourth) not to reuse any footage and make sure each loop was filmed differently. Normally the visual effects staff would simply film an explosion in front of a ship to show its destruction, but not this time–they actually blew it up. For this scene the visual effects supervisor had a very detailed replica of the 4-foot version of the Enterprise built. For the explosion itself, Gary Hutzel explained how he did it: “[W]e blew up a model for the Enterprise by dropping it from the ceiling of the sound stage toward a high speed camera while timed charges went off to blow it up in mid-air.” This is the first and practically only time we actually see the main shuttle bay.
According to Brannon Braga, when this show was airing the network affiliates got inundated with calls complaining that something was wrong with the broadcast, because the same footage was being shown again and again! The USS Bozeman is the same model as the Brittain in Night Terrors with just a couple of add-ons. Captain Bateson is, of course, Kelsey Grammer of Cheers and Frasier fame. He was still starring in Cheers when this episode was shot. Evidently TNG wanted Kirstie Alley to play Saavik again from Wrath of Khan as Bateman’s first officer, but she couldn’t due to a scheduling conflict. That would’ve been cool. Kelsey is a big fan of Star Trek, and the set of Cheers was right next to the sets of TNG on the Paramount lot. Here’s the short story of how and why Kelsey Grammer appeared:
Well, Jonathan Frakes is kind of a buddy of mine, and he just called up and said, “Hey, what are you doing? Can you come over for a day and shoot a scene as this guy?” And I said, “I’d love to, sure.”
Missable/Unmissable?. Absolutely unmissable, this episode is full of epic awesomeness. The next one is also fantastic.